Almost all the links in my front homepage are sponsored now. What’s next, a few ads in the bookmark bar? How about when I enter a URL, I then have to type “McDonald’s” before I can actually navigate there?
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The browser itself is free, and they have to make money somehow to keep the company running (if the CEO didn’t keep most of it for themself). If you don’t like it, you can turn it off or download an ad-free fork.
Name an internet browser that costs money
- AdsPower
- Avira Secure Browser
- Browserjet
- Horse
- Norton Private Browser
- Puffin
- Octobrowser
- Orion Browser
And many, many more.
Name an internet browser that’s not rigged to show you adds, or one that doesn’t havest your data.
Y’all can use LibreWolf or BestHomePageEver if it really bugs somebody. I do get being annoyed by shortcut ads though.
I wouldn’t recommend LibreWolf to the average user as they’ll unfoubtedly stretch their attack surface thin.
It’s not gonna make them more exposed than vanilla Firefox
Absolutely, it’s just the browser extensions most end-users want/need that would cause them distress in that regard. It’s simply not as user friendly from what I can recall, it’s been a while since I last used it so it may have improved since then
How much money are they likely to make over a lifetime of a user from the sponsorships. Would FirefoxPro actually be a good idea?
Microsoft Edge
I say let them cook a little, they arent drowning in donations and still do a tone of things for foss communities.
Let’s remember that the de fuckto market (ie pleb) alternative is overwhelmingly Chrome.
We dont need such projects just so we as individuals can have privacy focused experiences but also for how that influences markets and society. And to have any influence you need certain power of masses.
The perplexing thing is that unlike Thunderbird, I have never seen them ask for donations
Can’t you remove those?
Yup, you can turn it off.
It’s not overly difficult to get to the setting either.
There’s literally a settings button on that new tab page to take you right to the correct setting.
Personaly those shortcuts are a feature I literally never use so much so I don’t even register their existence anymore.
Yeah but you can literally just turn this off with no fuss.
1.Firefox for Android.
2.Tap the menu button.
3.Tap. Settings.
4.Tap Homepage.
5.Deselect Sponsored shortcuts under Shortcuts.
If we want software to be FOSS we have to stop bitching so much about developers trying to make the math work.
One could posit an ideal public sector development studio that takes grants from the state/federal government to produce useful Open Source software. Think public radio or public broadcasting, but for apps.
Hell, it isn’t even wild in the current moment. Modern day AWS and Azure subsidize much of its small/new user client base with the massive public sector clientele. OpenAI and DeepSeek are both the product of giant state-sponsored initiatives to develop AI that is free at point of service. Plenty of the original internet architecture was the product of public investment and grants, as was the university-centric ARPNET that would eventually be commoditizated into the commercial World Wide Web.
Look up the history of the National Center for Supercomputing Applications and the pioneering of Mosaic, the first widely available GUI-based web browser. It was the foundation for both Internet Explorer and Netscape Navigator, which licensed the original design for the tiniest fraction of what it would ultimately generate in future revenues.
Then turn it off?
Also, I rarely use Firefox on my phone and my links are still all from websites I’ve visited.
This was a bug
And looks like it’s been fixed :)
If they make some money from harmless icons, I mean, I can live with it
I was fine with 2. Having all but one icon in the tray be an ad is too much.
These can be turned off. Not great that they’re on by default, but you gotta pay the bills somehow right?
Yeah, this is basically the least offensive thing possible that ensures the lights stay on.
Remember when most sites had simple banner ads, and there was no widespread outcry about how much they sucked and we needed ad blocking software? Then they started flashing, then the popups and pop-unders came, then vids started autoplaying, and now here we are.
If advertisers hadn’t gotten greedier than banners on the sides of sites, maybe no one would’ve gotten around to blocking all their shit.
Pop-under ads were obnoxious. As were the popups that were like 1 pixel large but it still had the windows bordering around it.
Nicely said.
The only thing really offensive about it, judging from the post, is that they’re positioned before the user’s pins, not after.
I was okay with it before for that reason, but they went to far (as all eventually do).
Settings -> Homepage:
Uncheck everything “sponsored”.
Done.
It’s already done but I appreciate you being helpful. My black heart wiggled one time from the kindness you have shown here today. Peace.
People keep giving Mozilla shit for taking money from Google, yet they see an ad for a different company and lose their shit.
So how exactly were you planning on them making money if they don’t take money from Google to be the default search engine and they don’t take money to place advertisements on the default home page?
Open source projects shouldn’t have “making money” on their priority list. I would donate to Mozilla if I had some guarantee that my money would actually fund Firefox development
But why does (some) people want every software to be open source if making money can’t be an objective? /genq
I’m not one of those people, and to be clear I support for-profit companies open sourcing code. Mozilla is a unique case where donations are a tiny fraction of their income and Firefox development is a tiny fraction of their expenses. I just want to donate directly to the parts I care about (Firefox, MDN).
This has been the case for several years. Super easy to turn them off
Cool. Willing to say how or is that a secret?
It’s a secret reserved for smart people
it’s a secret only those who dare venture into the scary “settings menu” can learn about it. most don’t come back alive.
🚀 🕳 🤣
😪
There is a settings gear icon on that literal page that says customize next to it iirc
In Settings > Home, there’s a Sponsored Shortcuts checkbox.
Thank you.
No problem!
Firefox Desktop: Settings - Home panel - uncheck “Sponsored shortcuts” box.
Firefox Mobile: Settings - Homepage - uncheck “Sponsored shortcuts” box.
There are some more privacy friendly forks of “Firefox for Android”, which have sponsored shortcuts disabled or minimized by default. For example:
Feel free to give them a try :)
+1 for fennec
I use Fennec for my phone, but I’m rediscovering Floorp on desktop right now and I’m seriously impressed. Smoothest Fox Fork I’ve used in a long time.
I think the downvoters can’t hold these two thoughts in their mind at the same time:
- Firefox is the best browser.
- Firefox has serious problems because Mozilla is a terrible steward of it.
Firefox is the best browser
It’s only real competitors, in my eyes, are Firefox forks.
No it’s the complaint about one of the few transparent revenue flows Mozilla managed to pull off.
It’s disabled one step deep on the settings
There is a shitload of stuff going wrong with the Mozilla foundation and this doesn’t even make the top 10.
That’s the reason for my down vote: it’s nothing I want this community to focus on. It’s basically engagement bait with the topic “ads bad”.
Agreed. I love Firefox and don’t really like Mozilla.
Let the people downvote. These points don’t matter. I turned off the visibility of points. I am immune, my morale is unbreakable. The downvoters have no power here!
See ads, “how dare they” Sees paid version, “how dare they” Development costs time and money, pick your poison.
I was okay with the sponsored links, but now this is affecting the functionality of the app. My phone is shit and I have a hard time sliding to the next page.
You can disable sponsored shortcuts on the homepage settings, if that’s what it’s referring to
Everyone is too busy being angry to click the little gear icon.
Eh, the criticism isn’t invalid - those are still ads being added on the front page. What does irk me is people talking about how something breaks their workflow, yet they don’t even try to fix the issue.
but now this is affecting the functionality of the app
This shit irks me so much, because it keeps happening!
There’s this feature that makes your address bar randomly auto complete sponsored URLs instead of your actual history. Pretty fucking annoying to type
nand have Netflix pop up, even though I don’t use it.When you disable this “feature”, it still breaks your autocomplete! Now instead of suggesting Netflix, it just sometimes doesn’t suggest anything before I continue typing.
If you must add these anti-features to pay for your CEO, at least don’t break the app when it’s disabled!
I think you can make it only autocomplete your bookmarks in the settings.
But I also don’t want that. I just want the normal auto-complete to work 10/10 times, not just 9/10.
@UltraGiGaGigantic @lemmylurkaround Actually, I would gladly pay for a browser that is just doing its job.
I need one for macOS and iOS, preferrably one solution for both.
Could you point me in the right direction, please?Maybe you can donate to Mozilla?
Are they going to give me a link to a version that doesn’t do this? Otherwise what exactly am I paying for?
How has no one in this thread put together that you can literally just customize your home page, removing categories until it’s literally blank, or only keeping pages you select available.
Git good noobs.
Pay how much and how often?
$20 a month? $50 a month.
I’m not really sure what you’re getting at?
I understand that my circumstances are unusual but I would absolutely pay $20 a month without a moment’s hesitation.
I would pay $50, but I’d really have to believe in the project.
It’s worth noting that presently mozilla earns $0 from my not using google, and not seeing sponsored tabs.
It’s worth noting that presently mozilla earns $0 from my not using google, and not seeing sponsored tabs.
I thought Google pays (or paid?) Mozilla just to be the default engine out the box, regardless of whether you change it or not.
Another point is that it’s so easy to turn those things off (the sponsored shortcuts too) that I wonder if it would be worth the cost of launching an alternate version behind a paywall while making sure it works only for people who pay (which could be seen as DRM anyway, with potentially massive backslash). So I imagine the end result would not be that profitable (whether they decide to paywall it properly or not). Those who wanna donate and have no ads can do that already, those who want a cleaned up version of Firefox can have that and from neutral and independent third parties which I’d argue is better than if it were Mozilla who did it (and you can donate to Mozilla while using those too)… so I’m not sure it would make sense.
But it would make sense to have a donation pool specifically to fund Firefox development. That would be something interesting, considering Mozilla does other things besides Firefox. But I expect they don’t do that because they probably fear all donations will move there and they don’t want to lose funds for other things. We might need to create a separate organization if we want an independent fund for Firefox-based browsers.
You might be right about Googles agreement with Mozilla. I had assumed it would be based on the number of searches performed with a mozilla user agent but that’s just a guess.
I’m not sure why exactly but I just feel very uncomfortable with the idea of donating to Mozilla. I absolutely believe in the importance of Firefox’ existance, and if I felt I was contributing to that then I would donate. I think with the situation as it is making a donation would feel a bit like voting - my own contribution isn’t going to effect the outcome, and I don’t really agree with mozilla’s behavior anyway.
On the other hand, if Mozilla declared that they were going to spin off a separate org exclusively to develop and maintain firefox, and would have no ongoing relationship with google nor advertising of any kind, would focus on privacy, and were going to survive entirely on subscriptions, I feel like that’s something I could get behind and feel happy to contribute.
